Enthalpy
by silver-footsteps
Summary: "Sakura held my hand. Some would argue that we were holding hands. But Sakura and I both know. She's always holding my hand." Sasusaku. Epilogue to Entropy.


I know I said that I wouldn't be writing a sequel to _Entropy_, but the harder I thought, the more I remembered that I am an absolute sucker for happy endings. I make such efforts to avoid clichés, but when it comes to the typical epilogue of sappiness, I just can't say no. Besides, who doesn't want to see a suave Papa Sasuke in his thirties?

* * *

Enthalpy

_Itachi_

Mom wakes us up at 7 for school. I only know it's her because I can feel her hand stroking my head. And then I hear her voice.

"Time to wake up, you two. Come down and eat breakfast," she says.

I can feel my brother sleeping next to me. He always crawls into my bed sometime during the night. Mom never says anything about it. And Dad doesn't seem to mind either. I sit up and I squint at the window. The sun is so bright and it seems like it'll be another hot day. I'm grateful Mom convinced Dad to get air conditioners installed in the house last year. But Mom is sitting on the other side of the bed now, shaking at the mess of hair buried in my pillow.

"Izuna, wake up. You'll be late," she tells him. Her hair is loose. I like the way it hangs in her face as she leans over. Finally, there's a groan from where my brother's head should be and then she straightens with a smile.

"Wash up and come eat. Today's a busy day," she says. She says that every morning. Izuna stares at me past the covers. I don't like waking up in the mornings either but my brother is worse. Mom always laughs and says that he takes after Dad.

Sometimes, on one of his days off, Dad will come to wake us up instead. But then he ends up falling asleep too until Mom comes up to wake us all up again by yelling and that's a pretty scary way to start the day.

I watch Mom walk out of the room. Down the hall, I see Dad come down the walkway. He puts his hands around her waist and rests his head on her shoulder. I can't hear what they're saying but Mom laughs until Dad lifts his head. They kiss before Mom pushes Dad toward the bathroom and heads back toward the kitchen.

I pull Izuna up and we follow after Dad too. I like catching up to him because then I can hug his leg.

"Good morning, Dad," I say. Even though Dad's eyes are barely open this early, he nods and puts his big hands on our heads.

"Morning, boys. How'd you sleep?" he answers.

"I dreamt about the Hokage. He stole all our food," Izuna mumbles. We enter the bathroom and climb up onto the plastic stools we use every morning. Izune stands to Dad's left and I stand to his right. Dad stands in front of the mirror and rubs at the scratchy hairs on his cheek. Then he picks up his toothbrush and squeezes lots of toothpaste onto it. He then squeezes some out for Izuna and me.

"Sounds like a nightmare, Izuna," I reply as Dad begins brushing his teeth. Sticking his toothbrush into his mouth, Izune sleepily nods.

"That's no nightmare. He's done that before… that idiot," Dad says with a mouth full of toothpaste. I brush my teeth too, not rinsing my mouth until he does.

Dad waits for us to wash our faces before he washes his face and then shaves. Mom says we won't have to worry about shaving for a while but it's still fun to watch. He has to use this thick cream on his face that makes him look like an old man. Even though the razor is sharp, Dad isn't scared and he almost never cuts himself. And even if he does, he makes a little "tch" noise and wipes it with a tissue. Later, when we eat breakfast, Mom kisses it and it goes away.

Dad used to comb our hair for us but now that we're seven, Izuna and I both decided that it's time to do our own hair. Sometimes I try to copy Dad's style but mine won't stick up in the back like his does. After that, Dad pats us on the heads again and tells us to go get dressed. I try to copy his big steps when we walk back, but his legs are too long for me.

After I dress (I always try to be first), we go to the dining room to eat breakfast. Even if I get ready before Dad and Izuna, Mom is always ready before me. She smells sweet and she hugs me before she tells me to sit down. Some days she makes toast and fries an egg. Other days it's rice with side dishes and soup. I like it best when she makes the toast, but that's only every once in a while.

When Dad comes in, Mom always has coffee ready for him. Mom and Dad really like coffee even though Izuna and I don't. Because I was really curious, Mom let me try some last year. But she and Dad both drink it "black" (whatever that means) so it was really, really bitter. Mom says it's alright if I don't like it. She says we won't grow as tall as Dad if we drink coffee so I stick to my milk in the morning.

Dad kisses Mom again and sometimes he puts his arms around her while she cooks. Izuna always tells me "they need their privacy". I don't quite get it. I think it's gross. But since Izuna understands adults better than I do, I just keep eating. Dad sits down with his coffee. He's not like other dads that sit there reading newspapers. He always asks how school is and what's been going on. I don't get to eat breakfast with Dad every day so that's always nice.

If Dad has a mission, he packs his things and leaves right away. If he has a day off, he walks us to school before he leaves for Jounin HQ. Mom walks us to the academy sometimes too and because she's the Chief of Medicine, everyone knows her. It's pretty cool that our Mom is so popular but I don't like it when all the men smile and try to talk for her too long. Izuna and I pull her along and Mom always laughs even though I don't understand why she thinks it's funny.

Mom tries really hard to pick us up from the academy on time. But sometimes people get sick and she has to work late. Those days we go to the hospital and we hang out in her office until she's done. Sometimes Mom looks really tired after a day at the hospital but when Izuna asked once about it, she said that she really loves her job. We hold her hand on the walk home. Some of our friends joke that we're not babies anymore and that only babies or girls hold their mom's hands. But Mom's hands are nice and I think that it's okay to hold them for a little longer.

I'm still just a kid, after all.

Dad goes on missions for his job. He's gone for a few days at a time but he always comes home. The longest he was ever gone was for two months and when he got back, he stumbled into the house and just stood hugging Mom for a long time. Then he picked up Izuna and me (because we were just babies at the time- like 5) and he said he never wanted to be away for so long again. Mom smiled at that.

Dad is a really skilled Jounin. He has an ANBU tattoo but he says he retired after the war was over. Dad's not like the other dads who're fat or going bald. He trains every evening he's home and if we get our homework done, he takes Izuna and me with him. Dad's really good at taijutsu and ninjutsu but I like seeing him use his eyes the best.

Izuna and I have both seen each other's eyes turn red a few times before. Dad says that his started appearing around our age too and not to rush it. For now, he says, it's better to train our muscles and stamina. Mom's chakra control is even better than his, though. Sometimes they spar together and we get to watch. Mom picks up trees and breaks up the ground and Dad splits the sky with lightning. It's always cool to watch. None of our friends have cool parents like ours.

Mom trains us too whenever Dad's not around. But she focuses mostly on chakra control. We're learning to climb trees with her right now. I still fall a lot and Izuna can't do it either. Mom encourages us a lot. She promised us that once we get through the first step of training, she'll teach us to walk on water next. I'm looking forward to that a lot. I've seen her fight Dad on lakes and it seems like it would be a lot of fun.

It would be cool if I could be as strong as them one day.

* * *

_Izuna_

Grandmother and Grandfather's pictures are always sitting in the living room. There's a shrine on the side where there are always flowers in the vase and some kind of food at the altar. If I stay up late, I can smell incense in the air. Dad and Mom sit in front of every night. It didn't used to be there, but one day Mom put our uncle's picture up there too. Dad doesn't like to talk about his brother a lot. Sometimes, if Itachi and I sneak out of bed and spy, we see them just sitting there, not really talking. Even if Dad's away on a mission, Mom sits there anyway.

"It's paying respects to the dead. Your Grandmother and Grandfather and Uncle always watching over us," Mom explains one day.

I'm lucky, though, because my Grandma and Grandpa are still alive. They live in the south of the village and they run a little catering business. Grandpa has a bad leg and he can't walk as well as he used to. Mom says he was hurt a long time ago and that now it hurts more because of arthritis. Itachi and I help him walk around when we visit and we do chores so he can rest. Grandpa always says that we're good children and that makes me proud. Grandma feeds us a lot when we visit. She shows us old pictures of Mom and then we get to watch TV with her and Grandpa under the kotatsu.

Our uncle is the Hokage. He's not really our uncle but he was Mom and Dad's teammate and also their best friend growing up. Naruto-jii-chan and Hinata-ba-chan are really nice. They have a son named Ichiro who's still just a little baby. He can't walk or talk but if we ask, Hinata-ba-chan lets us take turns holding him. Apparently Hinata-ba-chan is the co-head of the Hyuuga clan along with her cousin. Mom explained to me once, that any children she had would be Naruto jii-chan's and that any children Neji-san has will be the Hyuuga clan's. It had something to do with how Uncle Naruto is one of the last of his clan kind of like Dad was before we were born. I didn't get it 100% but Mom is good at explaining hard stuff and I think I'll just ask her again in a few years when I'm smarter.

We have another uncle: Sai-jii-chan. He's in ANBU and he takes us out for lunch every once in a while. He's kind of awkward but he's really nice and sometimes he'll train us if Mom asks him. Mom says he and Dad didn't used to get along but now they're friends. He's dating one of Mom's old students, Kei-nee-chan, and Mom always teases him about if he's planning to get married. He's odd but I don't think he'd be a bad dad.

We have another aunt too. Ino-ba-chan. Come to think of it, we have a lot of aunts and uncles- more than any other kids do. We also have another grandpa but he doesn't like it when we call him that so he's just "Kakashi-san". I remember him not really visiting us often but lately he stops by a lot, especially when Dad's gone on his missions. He says he's keeping us company so we won't miss Dad too much. When Kakashi-san leaves, Mom secretly tells us that it's old age getting to him.

One of the other people we see a lot is Mom's apprentice, Takumi-nii-chan. He's actually not that much younger than Mom but he gets mad when we call him Uncle so he's just a big brother. He babysits for us sometimes and if we visit the hospital, he hangs out with us. Sometimes we see Nozomi-nee-chan with him. She works at the hospital too but she's so pregnant lately that she doesn't walk around much. We like her too. Itachi, I feel, probably likes her because she gives us candy when she sees us. I don't like sweets much and neither does he, but Mom does and we like to see the way she smiles when we hand over our loot.

We're different from other kids because we don't have any neighbors. Even though Ino-ba-chan lives in a clan district just like us, there are always so many people around whenever we visit. The houses next to ours are empty and the houses on all the other streets are empty too. I asked Dad once why that was he just looked really sad. When I asked Mom about it later, she stopped cooking dinner and knelt down to look at me.

"A long time ago, some people made some bad decisions and many people died. Your father will tell you about it when he's ready," she told me. Later that night, when Itachi and I were lying in bed together, we wondered what Mom meant. But we guessed that since Mom never lies to us, there had to be a good reason why Dad wouldn't tell us yet. When he came home from his mission, we didn't bring it up. But we hugged Dad extra tight and Mom looked at us like she couldn't decide whether to be happy or sad.

I like to watch Mom cook. Itachi likes to watch too, but he usually gets bored after a while and then goes off to hang out with Dad to train or something. But watching Mom make dinner is just as cool as watching her fighting, I think.

We have dinner at home a lot, even though Mom is always tired from work. She says that it's healthier than going out to eat and no one really complains because the food is always good. Itachi and I don't like sweets and neither does Dad, so that makes it easy for Mom to make something everything will like. We have stew, salad, and grilled fish. And on special days, Mom makes rice balls for us and Dad always seems to come home early on those nights.

Some nights, usually in the summer when the weather's nice, we'll all sit on the back porch and just stay there doing nothing. Mom will cut up peaches and stick little toothpicks in them. And then, if we pretend we're tired, Mom lets us put our heads in her lap and then we'll pretend that we're sleeping. Mom is the best doctor in the whole village so she knows that we're not really sleeping. That's how Itachi and I always used to get in trouble for staying up late even if we were lying in bed.

But Mom lets us pretend then. And then she'll talk with Dad about a bunch of things. Sometimes they talk about what it was like to be Genin together with Naruto-jii-chan. Or they'll talk about being on rotation together as ANBU. I think Mom likes to talk about after the war the best, though. She laughs a lot and I can hear Dad laughing too. They talk about the hospital and dates and even about the people that they remember.

They don't really like to talk about being Chunin together, though. It makes Mom and Dad sad, I think. From what Mom's told us, I know that Dad wasn't around when she was a Chunin. Itachi asked once if that was because he was on a mission. Because Dad is away on missions a lot and we always miss him then.

I remember what she was doing when she told us that. Mom was sitting in the living room healing our scratches from training. We were practicing punching wooden stumps at the Academy. And then Mom got really quiet for a second.

"Your dad wasn't on a mission. He was lost," she finally said.

"Lost? Like that time Izuna and I got lost on the way back from Grandpa's house?" Itachi asked.

"No. Your dad was lost for a long, long time. But he found his way home eventually. And then he stopped being lost," Mom said.

Itachi and I don't really get what she means by that. Dad never gets lost. If we go anywhere in the village with Dad, he always knows where he's going. Even if it's late at night, we don't get scared because Dad gets us home safely. But I think that when adults say things that sound like they make sense, but don't, means that they're actually talking about something else.

I think it's one of those things that I'll have to ask Mom again in a few years when I understand things better.

* * *

_Sakura_

I miscarried once before we had the twins. It didn't have anything to do with my immune system or anything. There was a lot of work at the hospital. Sasuke was home on mandatory leave after a particularly nasty mission. Late at night, a team of Chuunin came into the emergency room punched full of holes and with broken limbs.

It was such a long night. I found a few of the interns crying in the supply closet by the end of it. And to be honest, I almost wanted to join them.

I came home half-asleep myself. And when I stepped into the shower, I was almost dozing. But then, my stomach started to hurt. I opened my eyes, looked down, and saw a river of red flowing down my leg.

I hadn't known I was pregnant. I thought my period was late because of all the stress.

There were things to do. I needed to go to the hospital. I needed to get checked out. But my screams woke Sasuke.

I knew. I just knew.

We didn't talk to each other for a couple days after that. It hung there, a series of uncomfortable, unspoken questions.

What if we could never have children? Whose fault was it? Was it my fault?

But we tried again. Because life was so precious and the hollow ring of the empty Uchiha district was more painful than anything else. And each night, hands pressed to my still-flat stomach, I prayed to the gods I didn't believe in that this child would happen. And Sasuke would curl his arms around me, as if he were doing the same thing.

The emptiness in our house hurt Sasuke in a lot of ways, I knew. But he hurt in different ways from me. And so we comforted each other that way for half a year.

Sasuke told me once that he thinks that the twins are the universe's way of giving us back that first child we lost. I asked him which one it was, then. Which of our boys was the gift and which of them was the miracle? And Sasuke stared down at Izuna and Itachi sleeping so quietly in their cribs. It was a rare moment of peace for us. I laughed at his innocence, at his belief that the universe would really try to repay us in that simple way. Part of me wonders sometimes if that really is true, though. I know the biological processes that make twins happen. And I know the likelihood of such an occurrence.

But still, I watch my boys sometimes and I can't help but agree with Sasuke in my own way. Even if the universe didn't give us a miracle, our sons are miracles in themselves.

There's something that's been bothering me lately, though. I've seen the way that Sasuke looks at Ino and Chouji's daughter. The girl's already a handful and she's barely four. But the way she laughs is adorable and the way she hangs off of Chouji and showers him with baby kisses is undeniably cute. And what I see in Sasuke's eyes is jealousy.

I haven't told Sasuke that I missed my last period. I'm definitely pregnant. I can feel it, like a sort of weight on my chest. I felt the same way when I was pregnant with the twins too. That's not the thing that's been bothering me.

I'm just worried that if this one turns out to be a boy too that Sasuke is going to try to coerce me into trying for a fourth. Unlike the heads of the other clans, Sasuke-kun is a little daughter-crazy.

Not that I blame him.

I was a daughter too and I like to think that my parents were pretty happy with me.

But my growing family aside, I suppose I can't say that much has changed otherwise. The hospital is always busy. Team 7 still gets together for dinner once a week. And even though Sasuke and I fight it, it's always ramen and hot sake. Sometimes we even manage to bully Kakashi into joining us. We joke about one another, trade dumb stories about the kids, and sometimes, when the mood is just right and the alcohol has softened everything just enough, we talk about the past. We remember the bickering and the petty misunderstandings and the scratches from that woman's cat that lasted for days.

Since when have we been able to laugh about the past without remembering the pain too?

* * *

_Sasuke_

We got married, as everyone expected. Everyone but me, anyway. I stopped seeing myself with a happy ending a long time ago. And yet, for some reason, when I asked Sakura to marry me, she said yes like it was the most obvious thing in the world. And everyone laughed at me for being so surprised.

Naruto pestered me about making the moment romantic. He gushed about roses and candles and other useless things. Even Kakashi got involved with the mix, offering me one of his perverted books for making the night memorable. Thankfully, Sakura walked in on him during that particular remark and she promptly kicked the two of them out of the house.

In the end, Sakura and I went for a walk late at night. It was the middle of August- when the days were hot and humid but the nights cool. The cicadas were singing too. For someone who hates bugs, Sakura loves the sound that cicadas make.

Sakura held my hand.

Some would argue that we were holding hands. But Sakura and I both know.

She's always holding my hand.

We had just had dinner along with a few drinks. Her voice was low and mellow from the alcohol. And then, when we began crossing that little red bridge our team always met up at during our childhood, I stopped her.

"We should get married," I said.

My voice felt too loud. Or maybe it only felt that way because suddenly Sakura wasn't making a sound.

And then.

"We should," she answered.

But just a moment later, she asked me, "Why do you want to get married?"

It was like some method of psychological torture. In that moment, I became wholly convinced that if I answered wrong, that she would suddenly turn around and change her answer. That's not like Sakura at all. I know that. But this crazy, irrational person inside my head that always screams "what if" at times like this took over.

In the end, I didn't know what to say so I said everything. I told her that it was because everything seemed less awful when I saw her face first thing in the morning. The days seemed shorter and the nights felt longer when she was there to begin and end them. And all the awful, broken things about myself that I hated seemed a lot less awful when she was with me.

I made her cry.

But she was smiling as she cried and then she hugged me and everything seemed alright with the universe.

We got married in the spring. She wanted it during that short time when the cherry blossoms were blooming. It was still a little cold during the ceremony. She wore flowers in her hair. And she was beautiful like she was every day.

She cried again. Her parents did too. Her parents called me "son" as they hugged me. And that was one of those moments where I realized what Sakura meant when she said that something hurt her chest a lot but in a good way.

It's been almost ten years since our wedding. We have two sons and they're a handful and sometimes I wish that I was around more for them and for Sakura. We finally got around to fixing that koi pond in the backyard and now, every spring, the whole place is sprouting with Sakura's gigantic garden filed with flowers and herbs. Sakura still talks in her sleep a little.

I still dream about my parents, about my clan. And I dream about my brother, too. Sometimes I dream that he's in our house, playing with my sons and teaching them to throw weapons at targets. I can hear Sakura cooking in the kitchen and sometimes it sounds like she's talking to my mother. And this time, when I ask Itachi if he's busy, he looks over at me and pokes me in the forehead.

"Ah, welcome home, Sasuke. You've done pretty well for yourself," he says.

Whenever I wake from those dreams with tears running down my face, Sakura's already lying awake next to me. She crawls under my arm and lies on my chest, staring at me without saying anything. And only after a long time, when my tears have dried and we're almost sleeping again, she whispers.

"That dream again, huh? Did you see him?" Sakura asks me. I can hear the clock ticking down the hall. A frog croaks from the pond in the back. If I focus, I can feel the thrum of our sons' chakras as they slumber on.

"…Yeah."

She pushes her hair out of her eyes.

"Happy or sad?"

"Both." Always.

She kisses me.

And then she goes back to sleep, her cheek against my shoulder. The places where our bare skin touches feels warm against the autumn chill.

I hope my sons are having good dreams instead.


End file.
